TWENTY-thirteen Completed Reading List

JANUARY 2013
1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society  January book club
2. Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood 1.13.13
3. The Art of Racing in the Rain 1.16.13

FEBRUARY 2013

4. Marry Him: The Case for settling for Mr. Good Enough 2.1.13
5. Bossypants 2.4.13
6. The Fault in our Stars 2.8.13
7. The Jane Austen Marriage Manual 2.16.13  February book club

MARCH 2013

8. Left Neglected 3.5.13
9. Love Anthony 3.21.13
10. Y: a novel 3.25.13  March book club
11. The curious incident of the dog in the night-time  3.29.13

APRIL 2013

12. Until I Say Good-Bye: My year of living with Joy 04.07.13
13. The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards 04.18.13
14. My Mother was Nuts 04.25.13

MAY 2013

15. When in doubt, add butter 05.02.13

16. The Perks of Being a Wallflower 05.06.13

17. State of Wonder 05.14.13 May library book club
18. Wife 22: a novel 05.22.13  June book club

JUNE 2013

19. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry 06.10.13  July/Aug/Sep book club
20. The Postmistress July library book club

JULY 2013

21. Smart Women 07.13.13
22. Speedbumps: Flooring it through Hollywood
23. Fall Down Laughing 07.25.13
24. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years 7.30.13

AUGUST 2013

25. Where'd you Go, Bernadette? 08.10.13

26. The Art of Fielding 08.31.13  September library book club

SEPTEMBER 2013

27. The Beautiful Ruins 09.18.13
28. The Ocean at the End of the Lane 09.29.13

OCTOBER 2013

29. The Silent Wife 10.11.13 October book club
30. Just What Kind of Mother are You? 10.16.13

NOVEMBER 2013

31. Sisterland 11.1.13
32. The Night Circus - 11.3.13 November library book club
33. WILD: From lost to found on the Pacific Coast Trail 11.22.13  November book club
34. Revenge wears Prada 11.27.13

DECEMBER 2013

35. The Chaperone 12.30.13  January library book club

started, but not finished Life after Life (Jill McCorkle)

started, but not finished Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker January HER book club

started, but not finished The Help 

IN PROGRESS
The Help  - in progress, started on vacation 2/2013... will eventually hope to get back to it

My (hopeful) reading List for Twenty-thirteen

I keep writing down book titles that I want to read and then, in my disorganized state, I can't find where I put the list(s) – until I find one or more of them at a later date. While it IS nice to stumble upon my own handwriting, which I am often accused of it looking "too perfect", I have decided that I will just go HERE on this blog and I will start my list (and likely add to this post as the year goes on.)

BOOK CLUB READS 2013:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society •DONE•
The Jane Austen Marriage Manual •DONE•
The Bad Girl
The Fault in our Stars •DONE•

BOOKS I WANT TO READ:
The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein •DONE•January 16
Parenting with Love and Logic
Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood •DONE•January 13
Happier at Home - Gretchen Rubin
The Reason for God - Timothy Keller
Stumbling on Happiness - Daniel Todd Gilbert
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
The End of Your Life Book Club - Will Schwalbe
The Anti-Romantic Child - Priscilla Gilman

HEARD ABOUT THEM IN THE NEWSPAPER/INTERNET... some of them "classics":
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
any title  by author Kurt Vonnegut
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
The Instructions - Adam Levin
Orlando - Virginia Woolf
The Education of Henry Adams - Henry Adams
Pride & Prejudice, Emma - Jane Austen
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
The Yellow Birds: A Novel - Kevin Powers

MAYBE CONSIDER...
Lincoln's Last Days - Bill O'Reilley/Dwight Zimmerman
Killing Lincoln - Bill O'Reilley/Martin Dugard
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Elin Hildebrand (any title)
Jodi Piccoult - Plain Truth OR Between the Lines
The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D - Nichole Bernier
Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
Hector and the Search for Happiness - Francois Lelord
The Glass Castle
The Book Thief
The Kite Runner
Harry Potter books
Twilight series
Sarah Palin
Spoken from the Heart - Laura Bush
Me talk pretty one day
Water for Elephants
Mockinbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee
Sisterland - Curtis Sittenfeld - DONE
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter - DONE
The Faraway Nearby - Rebecca Solnit
A Field Guide for Getting List - Rebecca Solnit
Where'd you go, Bernadette - Maria Semple  - DONE

Writing a letter

I wanted to write more letters AND be more positive in the New Year.

I had started writing a letter. And THEN, the tone in my letter started to get angry so, I ripped it up and threw it away.

And now, I have NO LETTER to mail and a garbage can filled with confetti.

Better luck next time...

2013 Color of the Year

I can't wait to incorporate this 2013 Pantone Color of the Year into my Project Life album!

Here are the CMYK color values that I am using in my Project Life album this year:

Emerald 80-10-55-0

Dusk Blue 50-15-8-0

Tender Shoots 30-1-88-0

Grayed Jade 42-2-34-0

Lemon Zest 2-9-75-0

Linen 2-11-20-0

Monaco Blue 99-79-27-12

Poppy Red 0-94-88-0

Nectarine 0-55-75-0

I'm envisioning some nice color combinations in my designs... 

likely using Monaco Blue, Emerald and Tender Shoots.

HOME... NOW, THEN and WHEN?

The sky is clear and the snow sparkles, resembling glitter, with the bright sunlight. It looks like a beautiful day, but LOOKS can be deceiving. The Local on the 8's reports a sub-zero windchill and the morning temperature fell into single digits. Our home, built in 1896, has plastic on many of the windows during the winter season and we KNOW that plastic is doing SOME good for us because we can hear it move as the winds blow outside. 

A Polartec fleece jacket is part of my "mom uniform" most days, as well as my red Polartec slippers (that Mike likes to steal, pretending not to know WHERE his are at... or pretending "to warm them for me"). I must admit that there ARE days that I don't get out of my pajamas at all; it's NOT all that uncommon, really. (The boys don't seem to mind one bit either; in fact, 3-year old Sydney protests getting dressed on non-schooldays quite often, insisting on wearing his snuggly, warm jammies instead. I think he WOULD enjoy wearing jammies to school, in fact.)

The thermostat is set warmer because we are home nearly all the time and we don't want the kids to get cold. We joke that 70° often still feels COLD, but sometimes 72° feels too warm; wondering if - like the story of the Three Bears - if 71° would feel "just right"?

I'm not sure HOW or WHY it happens, but it seemed that there was always "a SMELL" to Grandma's upstairs and attic space. The closet in our office, that houses all of my hanging clothes, has that similar "old house smell".

Business in the bathroom is kept brief as the toilet seat gets quite cold if the door is kept closed in the tiny room that shares TWO outside walls. The upstairs bathroom, also sharing two outside walls, but a little bit warmer than downstairs, pours rusty brown water into the whirlpool tub EVERY TIME it is turned on and it isn't uncommon to have a few tiny rust chunks laying in the bottom of the tub when you take a bath.

Having lived in two "newer homes" in my adult life, I miss the warmth, new windows and energy efficiency of those homes. Although, the character of older homes IS missing from new(er) homes; character and charm that can't be beat. Our house boasts 5-panel wooden doors, a beautiful wooden banister and solid wood upstairs railing in the hallway, as well as hardwood floors throughout much of the main floor. (Features you pay dearly for in new homes.)

I find myself wondering WHERE we'll move to next. What will the housing market look like in our new destination? Affordable? Expensive? Will our next house be OLD or NEW? Will we be able to paint our front door RED? Will there be a deck or a patio for eating outside? Will we have a fenced yard for the kids to play? Will there be a small hill to sled down OR the perfect tree to build a tree house? Will the house have french doors? (A feature that I have ALWAYS admired, but never had in a house.) Will it have an eat-in kitchen or just a dining room, like what we have now? Will we have a finished basement where the kids can play so that our living room isn't filled with toys and books? Will the boys continue to share a bedroom? Will we have a PLAY ROOM? Will I have an "office" for my neglected crafting supplies? Will Mike have "a man cave" so that he can proudly hang his mounted deer head, as well as his fishing pictures on the wall? Will we be close(r) to any of our family or friends?

Mike recently saw pictures of the latest HGTV Dream Green Home and declared "I would LOVE to live in that house! It is a gorgeous home!!!" (Wondering IF he'll ever log in for his chance to win it? Entries start TOMORROW, I think.) After viewing the home online, I admit that I would LOVE to live in that house as well; except for the fact that we'd have NO JOBS in that area, nor would be near our families.

I remain hopeful that WHEN it is time to sell our house, that it sells quickly so that we can join Mike in his new(est) career move. Whenever and wherever it is, we're sure to have an adventure together as a family...

Wiser with reading, happier too

Between reading "The Happiness Project" and "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus", I have become happier and wiser.

Last night, as I was going to bed, I called Mike (at work) and asked him to "put your lunchbox dishes in the dishwasher and turn it on when you get home; it looks like there is almost enough for a full load."

"I can probably do that."

I asked him "Do you want me to put the soap in it now so that it is ready... or do YOU want to do it?"

"No. Just leave the soap sit out so that it reminds me to do it."

I agreed, left the kitchen (CLEAN) and went off to bed.

This morning, when I woke, I discovered there were dirty dishes ALL OVER THE COUNTER and in the sink, but the soap had, in fact, been put away. I checked the dishwasher to see if it had been run. (YES, it had!)

Shaking my head, I recalled the conversation... put your LUNCHBOX DISHES into the dishwasher. Ah, yes.... I never specified "your lunch box dishes and whatever dishes you dirty after you get home from work so that our kitchen STAYS CLEAN!" ... Silly me.

I wondered WHY in the world would he have not loaded the rest of the dishes, too - so that EVERYTHING was clean in the morning... especially since there was plenty of room in the dishwasher BUT, because I have become a better person in my reading, I knew NOT TO NAG or be critical about it. Instead, after he woke up, I announced "Thanks for running the dishwasher for me!"

"Yeah, it was real hard." he announced.
(In the penile language, I think that translated to: You're welcome.)

 A short while later, I could hear the clanking of dishes being unloaded from the dishwasher. (It is HIS agreed upon job to unload, but I do it the majority of the time because I am home and because it is much easier to do it myself than to wait for him to do it. I really DO, however, appreciate it each time that HE unloads it.

Surprisingly, all of the dishes from last night (and my chai tea mug from this morning) had been re-loaded into the newly-emptied dishwasher.

Redemption.

Thanks, honey! I'll try to keep the kitchen clean during the day so that we can (hopefully) enjoy a clean kitchen tonight after you get home from work. And maybe... JUST MAYBE.... the playpen full of clean laundry will be folded and put away, too. But now, I have to move on to picking up toys and cleaning toilets...

I have an AWESOME HUSBAND

I have an AWESOME HUSBAND!

He was FANTASTIC throughout our household's recent stomach bug. (I didn't think that puking kids would be his cup of tea.)

Tonight, when he couldn't hook up our new dishwasher, he offered to help me handwash all of our dirty dishes. Of course, I took him up on that offer because I don't normally get help cleaning up the kitchen. I know he really didn't WANT TO, but he did it. He washed, I dried. We made a great team! I have an AWESOME HUSBAND!

:)